Numb
by TheBelovedAuthor
Summary: *Allegiant Spoilers* Veronica forgot to finish a chapter, so I will! Alternate ending to Allegiant. "My mother just smiles at me, and I can't feel anything. I don't miss her, I don't want to follow her, I don't want to go back. I am numb. She slowly disappears and the light fades. Slowly, and then all at once the light goes out, and I still feel nothing." *EDITED*
1. Chapter 1

I slide to the floor. I feel something warm on my neck, and under my cheek. Red. Blood is a strange color. Dark.

From the corner of my eye, I see David slumped over in his chair.

And my mother walking out from behind him.

She is dressed in the same clothes she wore the last time I saw her. Abnegation gray, stained with her blood, with bare arms to show her tattoo. There are still bullet holes in her shirt; through them I can see her wounded skin, red but no longer bleeding, like she is frozen in time. Her dull blond hair is tied back in a knot, but a few lose strands frame her face in gold.

I know she can't be alive, but I don't know if I'm seeing her now because I'm delirious from the blood loss or if the death serum has addled my thoughts or if she is here in some other way.

She kneels next to me and touches a cold hand to my cheek.

"Hello Beatrice," she says, and she smiles.

"Am I done yet?" I say, and I'm not sure if I actually say it or if I just think it and she hears it.

"No my child; you still have a long way to go," she says and she caresses my cheek with her thumb.

I sigh and I lean gently into her caress. It reminds me of when I was a child and she would sit with me as I fell asleep. All I want to do now is sleep. I look up at her with an exhausted expression and say, "But mother, I am so tired. Can I please be done?" I feel like I'm begging, but I do not know for what. I'm just so tired.

"There is a reason you must stay, Beatrice. There is always a reason," she tells me and I close my eyes. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to reopen them, and when I do I cannot look directly at my mother. She is too bright, as if she is standing directly in front of the sun. But I force my eyes open.

I know she is leaving me and that I should do something to get her to stay, but I end up asking, "Mother will you come back? Will you come back to me?" I have a feeling that I will not like the answer, but I must ask. I have to hear it.

It is so bright that I cannot see an expression on my mother's face, but when she speaks I can hear her underlying exhaustion. "You know the answer to that, Beatrice," she tells me and I close my eyes. "My job has been done, but yours hasn't. Now, I must go my child." She starts to back away from me, and she turns to walk into the light.

"Wait mother, what must I do? What is the reason I can't come with you?" I ask to the white void surrounding me. I feel a tug in my stomach pulling me back into the nothingness. I can sense that my mother is smiling at me but I can't feel anything. I don't miss her, I don't want to follow her, and I don't want to go back. I am numb.

She disappears and the light fades. Slowly, and then all at once the light goes out, and I still feel nothing.

...

There is something warm on my arm, but it feels soft, but not like a blanket. I do not have the energy to think further about it, however. I don't have the energy to do anything, and my limbs are incapable of moving, so I give in to the feeling of nothingness that envelops me.

But soon I realise that my shoulder hurts, and so does my neck. Strangely though it doesn't feel like pain. I know that it hurts, but I only feel a tingle. The warmth disappears, and it is no longer on my body. My body becomes heavier, and I feel like the bed is sucking me in and trying to consume me.

"Tris," I hear softy. It takes me a second to recognize the sound as a voice. The voice sounds comforting, loving. I want to hear more.

"Please wake up soon. People miss you here, more than you would realize." I hear the voice, but I don't recognize it, and I don't understand the words. My whole brain is fuzzy, and the tingling has slowly started to migrate to other parts of my body. It is spreading like an infection.

I hear footsteps and one final word before I hear a clicking noise. The tingling has spread everywhere except for my head; it feels like my whole body should be in pain. But it doesn't hurt.

The tingling spreads to my neck, then to my chin. And finally after what seems like ages it reaches my brain. The numbness starts to fade, and suddenly my body seems less heavy. I realize that I am beginning to regain consciousness.

Another click. This time I can comprehend it as a door opening. I hear soft voices, but I cannot understand them. They must be whispering. My shoulder starts to ache and it seems to originate deep in my body. It hurts.

Pain. I am feeling pain. No more feeling nothing. I try to gather enough energy to speak, and I call Tobias' name into the nothingness, as I still do not have the strength to open my eyes. My voice does not fully work, and my words come out raspy and thick. My throat feels as if it hasn't been used in decades and I start to wonder about where I am and how long I have been here.

The voices stop and I hear fast feet hitting the ground. I feel warmth again on my body and this time, I can trace its location. It is on my arm. It feels heavier than the last time, and rougher. It feels familiar, like a calloused hand.

I hear my name being called, telling me to open my eyes. I want to listen to it, I really do, but I can't. I just don't have the energy. "Tobias..." I whisper, and I am not able to speak any louder.

The tingling in my body was slowly turning to pain at first, but now the pain exists everywhere and my whole body hurts. It is no longer an ache; it is a paralyzing pain that wants to consume me. But I will not let it. I will not go numb again.

The weight moves again, this time to my cheek. It feels different than the pain, it just feels heavy. The hand seems to be wet, I wonder with what. It might be blood.

"Tris, Tris please wake up." I feel a drop of warm liquid fall onto my face. Tears. Tobias, it is Tobias. It is his voice. I suddenly feel a rush of energy that I only feel when I am about to do something dangerous. It is the rush I get zip lining.

I understand why mother told me I had to come back; I haven't finished living. I still have work to do, and I still have things to feel. I feel myself completely gain consciousness, and I open my eyes.

**AN: Hello everyone! I wrote this as a one shot, but as I got to the end I realized I could extend this into a full story. If you would like to see this story continued, please review and tell me. If I have enough interest I will continue it. Also, the beginning of this chapter I took directly from the books. If you recognized it, that is why! I give all credit to Veronica Roth to the characters and the beginning, but I take credit for the rest. Thank you all so much and remember, Review!**


	2. Chapter 2

Three days later I am still in the same hospital bed, although now I am fully awake and able to comprehend my surroundings. I found out that I was asleep for five days before I finally came to my senses, and that they almost gave up on me. But Tobias would not let them. He would not let me die.

No matter what I think or what I feel now I still do not fully understand my mother's words. I suppose I never will; or maybe once I finally reach the end of my life I will have a eureka moment and it will hit me. I do not know, and there is no way to figure it out.

After I finally came to my senses that first day of being awake, I was inconsolable. I was in tremendous pain, and no matter what I did I could not escape it. They gave me medicine but it had no effect on me. I kept calling out in pain and my shoulder felt like it was ripping away from the rest of my body. The thought still makes me shudder.

But it was not just the pain that drove me to the brink of insanity. Seeing my mother that day scared me; I knew that I was so close to dying. And now I felt like I had this mission, this task that I had to complete but I had no idea what it was. And it killed me that I could not complete it. But part of me did not want to.

You see, I understood that if I completed this mission my time would be up, and that my journey on this planet would be over. So of course I wanted to extend my time on Earth, but I also just wanted to know the answer. I recalled the look on my mother's face as she told me about it. She looked so proud of me, but there was something in her eyes that told me it was going to be a long harsh road.

The mixture of emotional and physical pain was just so much to deal with after waking up from a five day sleep. But that is what this world is about I have come to realize. It is about emotions, from the cold hard ones that drive anger and fear to the fiery ones that drive passion and love. Without these things existence would just be that: existing. Living, I had determined, was a completely different entity.

Tobias stayed by my bedside every waking moment that he could. They even allowed him to set up a cot by my bed so that he could stay with me over night. He was one of the things keeping me from completely breaking, because I saw how much he was hurting yet he was still so strong. And I wanted to be like that.

So I lived. And I fought. And I cried and laughed. And now here I am sitting in this hospital bed with gauze wrapped around my shoulder, under my arm, and over my back. The doctors come in every few hours to change it. I look down and see that it is starting to look red and bloody. It must be time for another visit.

Tobias is asleep on his cot. He went to bed right after I did I assume, because he stayed next to me and rubbed my head until I fell asleep. He has done that every time I have gone to bed. I wonder if he does it for me or for himself.

I turn my head to look at him, but because my hospital bed is up higher than his cot all I can see is his left side. I cannot see his face, although that is what I want to see the most. I do not dare roll over though. I made that mistake before and I will not make it again.

I feel comforted because I can here him softly snoring below. It is not necessarily a snore; it is a heavy breathing that is distinctly Tobias. I smile slightly as I hear it. Hopefully he is finally calming down and he doesn't have to worry about me anymore.

I close my eyes and try to shape my dreams in my head. I think about Tobias and I sitting in the same spot that we had our first kiss, softly kissing and embracing each other. The thought makes me smile, and this is all I think about as I slowly drift off to sleep.

...

_Running. Heavy feet pound and crash against the hard cement floor as I flee. I cannot breathe, my lungs are full of fire and I feel as if I am about to trip and fall due to my speed. But I cannot stop. He is after me. _

_I'm crying and my shoulder bleeds heavily as I try to escape my chaser but he is gaining on me. I make a quick left turn to try to throw him off but I run straight into a hard, red wall. My shoulder slams into it first and I cry out as I collapse on the ground. This is it. This is how I die. _

I shoot straight up in my bed and I am gasping for breath. Tears stream down my face as I look around the room, and I feel my heart pumping and pumping against my rib cage. My eyes land on Tobias standing next to me with eyes full of fire. He looks worried as he tries to grab for my cheeks with both of his hands and he says repeatedly, "Tris wake up! Tris it's okay! You're okay!" At the sight of him I start bawling and I drag him into my bed by his shirt with my one good arm. I tuck my head as far into his chest as I can get it to hide from the man who was about to kill me. I realize that he is not here now, and that it was a dream, but still I cry and my body trembles.

I feel his arms wrap securely around my body and I try to climb further into him, just trying to get away._ He was after me, he was after me_. I hear a soft shushing noise in my ear but it has no effect. It is not until I feel his hand start to rub small circles on my back that I really feel his presence. Tobias stays close to me until I finally calm down, although my body still stays tight against him and I silently wish for him to protect me from the man trying to kill me.

This is how all of our mornings have gone, only each night the nightmare had been different. But the ending was always the same. Every time I was stuck at a dead end with my shoulder aching and my body collapsed against a bright red wall. I start to wonder why the wall had to be red.

Every morning he holds me like this, and every morning he brings me back from my dream induced panic-attack. The doctors warned me about this. They said I had been in such a traumatic situation that I could have something called PTSD. At the time I did not bother to hear what the acronym stood for, I only cared that it meant I would be haunted by that night for the rest of my life.

But once the nightmares are over and I finally calm down I am okay. I pull back from Tobias, but hold on to his hand tightly, and he smiles at me. He has this smile that makes you feel like you are the only one he cares about in the entire world, and that it will always be that way. But he does not seem to know that.

I stare into those calm filled eyes and I let my breathing finally calm down back to normal. I know this is how life is going to be; he will comfort me as I cry and I will fall deeper and deeper in love with him. And suddenly I appreciate that my mother did not let me go with her. Because people make mistakes when they cannot feel anything. But right now I feel so much, and all of the pain suddenly is worth it.

**AN: Hello all! I just stumbled upon my first chapter of this story and the second chapter just kind of wrote itself. If anyone wants it I may be able to write a story about Tris and Tobias from this point forward, and since it is already AU because Tris survived I could do really anything. If you are interested in this, tell me in the reviews! Thank you for reading!**


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